Sigma 50-500, D30 and wildlife

[pigasus]

A friend loaned me his Sigma 50-500 lens and his tripod to have a play with. So I went out into the back garden, set it all up and shot some local wildlife. :D

http://www.pigasusgrove.net/photoshow/CRW_1484.jpg

The above was taken at 500mm, 400 ISO, 1/350 at f5.6. I find the results slightly soft. Not sure if it's the focus or a less than perfectly solid tripod (the plates were slightly wobbly) or just the nature of the beast. What's interesting, though, is that I threw my 1.4x TC (Kenko) on it and the results were nearly the same quality as without. And that's with manually focussing.

But the 50-500 is a beast (for me) at 1850g. I know if I owned it I would probably drop it on more than one occassion. I really like the reach - effectively 800mm without a TC and 1120 with the 1.4x! Oh well, back to the drawing board.

[Sniper]

Scary animals!!

Nice picture, really. You think it's soft? I'll say it's knife-sharp compared to my bad G2. I am dreaming of a D60 (and will do so for at least 6 more month).

Anders

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Sally,

I'm sure any lack of sharpness was due to the subjects' quivering with excitement at the thought of the international exposure they were about to receive. :)

With wobbly mounts did you use the timer/remote cable/mirror lockup?

Regards,

[pigasus]

sniper wrote:
I am dreaming of a D60 (and will do so for at least 6 more month).

Hey Anders! Why not dream about a D30 instead? Then you might not have to wait 6 months. The main advantage of the D60 (more pixels) isn't all that critical unless you like to print really big pictures. And it seems there's still a lot of unresolved problems with losing files on the D60.


Roger_Cavanagh wrote:
I'm sure any lack of sharpness was due to the subjects' quivering with excitement at the thought of the international exposure they were about to receive. :)

What you can't see is Cubie (my dog) standing just off camera waiting to retrieve HIS toys.


With wobbly mounts did you use the timer/remote cable/mirror lockup?

Ah - nope. Probably should have used timer (no worry about the beasts moving off :D). I used the old drape-arm-over-the-lens-to steady-it routine (as per Arthur Morris).

Regards,

[Sniper]

Can't buy a D30 in Sweden anymore. It disappeared when the D60 came out on the market. I can buy a used D30 maybe, but I don't think I want to do that.

Anders